In 2003, I crossed paths with a woman—I'll call her Mrs. H.—whose life journey would entangle with mine until neither of us knew whether we were embracing or wrestling, whether it was affection we shared or hatred, whether it was the well-being of others we promoted or only our own reputations.

I was a reporter on assignment in Ethiopia, mapping the destructive course of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. She was among the first of a new breed of untrained volunteer foster mothers, her little brick house and dirt yard flooded with frightened, malnourished orphans.

"May I write about you? About your work?" I asked her by e-mail, introducing myself through a shared acquaintance.

On a hilly dirt road in Addis Ababa, within a compound encircled by a rusty corrugated-metal fence, we shook hands in greeting. I towered over her. Mrs. H. was 4'8", amply built, in her late fifties, and dressed in a short-sleeve black T-shirt, an ankle-length cotton skirt with an elasticized waist, and rubber flip-flops. Her hair was an upright graying hedge of brushed-out curls. She swept me behind her, through dozens of raggedly dressed young children, into a two-room brick house. I sat on a worn-out sofa and Mrs. H. perched on the edge of her single bed. A kerchiefed young woman knelt on the cement floor to roast coffee beans for us over a portable brazier.

Like most Americans, I'd found it impossible to grasp the cruel force of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, where 12 million children had been left without one or both parents. I'd thought that a portrait of one sweet lady on the front lines, trying single-handedly to mother dozens of kids, would be a story on a scale anyone could follow.

Mrs. H. had a charming crinkly-eyed smile. Her English was excellent. Unaccustomed to being an interview subject, she postponed our talk by chatting with the young woman preparing our coffee. I assumed my role as journalist, leaning toward her with pen poised over my notebook. She waved away my attentions at first, reclined, laughed, looked elsewhere, sipped her coffee. But finally she relented and began to tell me her life story.

The widow of a high school principal, she had worked as an accountant and a caterer until the death of her young adult daughter in 1998. In profound grief, she quit work and secluded herself, leaving her house only to visit her daughter's grave. When her friends looked in on her, Mrs. H. said: "My life is over."

One day a leader of her church knocked at her door to ask if she could shelter an orphaned teenage girl. Reluctantly, Mrs. H. agreed. Two weeks later, the churchman returned with a homeless teenage boy. Then he phoned about a pair of six-year-old girls, and about a set of siblings, and how about a few babies, until he had stuffed 30 children into Mrs. H.'s small house and modest outbuilding. "Why can't you ask someone else?" she finally cried.

"I have no one else to ask," replied the church officer. In that early epoch of AIDS, the uninfected greatly feared their infected countrymen and even their orphaned children. The stigma of AIDS was so terrible that people didn't speak its name, only alluding to it as "the slim disease."

Soon even social workers and local officials turned to Mrs. H. for help with the rising tide of orphans, until she had 50-some children in her care. She received a donated rusted-out old trailer, which became a dining hall and schoolroom. She named her foster home in memory of her late daughter. She offered day-care services, too, and distributed food to destitute and sick adults in the neighborhood.

Dazzled by her good works, moved by her generosity, I began writing my story while living in a small hotel in Addis. The story was richer and more poignant than I'd dreamed. Mrs. H. was in the very thick of life; she was saving lives, giving life. She allowed me to join her on daily expeditions by taxi into the dusty, crowded city to rendezvous on street corners, where a dying parent, or a concerned neighbor, or a kind police officer would hand her another scrawny child or wailing baby. One morning I arrived at the compound and learned that, at dawn, an afflicted mother had knocked at the metal door, transferred her baby to Mrs. H., turned around, collapsed, and died in the lane.

With the publication of my article, Mrs. H. became famous. Contributions from readers flowed into my mailbox, and I transferred every penny to her. The sums reached tens of thousands of dollars.

"You!" she told me over the phone. "You are the one who has helped us!"

Now I felt a little dazzled myself, by what I had accomplished! From my middle-class Atlanta house, I'd reached across thousands of miles to find this person, and then flown there and seen the rescues of scores of children. My descriptive words had enabled readers to follow me in spirit, and to involve themselves in the struggle. I'd stepped into one of the darkest and most powerful currents of our time and had been of use. I treasured this opportunity. The privilege of helping the orphaned children gave both Mrs. H. and me great joy.

Yet, at the same time, we both had the impulse to glance over our shoulders and wonder, Are people noticing our good works?

With the donations from my readers, Mrs. H. moved to a newer and cleaner brick-and-cement compound, behind inlaid-stone walls and an ornate cast-iron gate. She hired caregivers and cooks. She bought a used 15-seat van and hired a driver. She leased a modern three-story house with a small green lawn, flower garden, and satellite dish, to be rented out weekly as an income-generating bed-and-breakfast. She won a humanitarian award and traveled to New York City to receive it. I flew to New York to welcome her, and to introduce her at the event. Through the two of us, more funds and goodwill flowed toward the AIDS orphans. Meanwhile, we both feasted on catered lunches served by waiters in black tie, and then posed for photographs.

When I proposed expanding my magazine article into a book about her—as a way to tell the larger story of the AIDS orphan crisis—Mrs. H. agreed. As our good intentions expanded, our egos sat up and took notice too.

It was a different Mrs. H. I found in the new compound. She wore a belted dress and carried a briefcase. She seemed to expect extra deference from me, and I gave it. I think I may have been eager to assume a humble stance toward her as a way of deflating my new sense of self-importance, of regaining my natural humility. For I felt rich and powerful there in the foster home. Compared with this poverty, I was rich; with access to magazine editors and book publishers, I was powerful. I truly wanted to relay the stunning stories unfolding around me; I felt in awe of the suffering and the strength of the people I met. I fell in love with the children.

I wanted the occasional "Look at me too!" feeling to get out of the way. And I didn't want to detect it in Mrs. H. either.

Along her lane, beggars still congregated, knocking on her door at all hours, demanding handouts. But Mrs. H. was focusing exclusively on the orphans now. (I wondered: Is it because she drew the most attention from me and my readers for that part of her work?) The poor people in the lane felt spurned, abandoned. When Mrs. H. hopped up into the passenger seat of her van and rode out into the city, sitting erect, gazing upon the landscape like an empress, the locals regarded her and her sudden wealth with skepticism.

And I feared that all was not well within the fine new compound. As the numbers of children grew, Mrs. H. couldn't possibly mother them all, and yet she accepted more and more and more. What I had found sweetest about her—her ability to make every little kid feel loved and special—receded in the face of her busy schedule, her growing importance. She was involved in citywide negotiations for recognition and funding; she was full of grand and wonderful schemes, including the dream of a free clinic for the homeless. She arrived back home in the late afternoons exhausted and impatient. She'd clap her hands in anger at the children, silencing them. Soon they'd scatter when they saw her coming, like little mice at the approach of a cat.

"You are the one," Mrs. H. told me again at the end of each of my trips. "You are the one who is helping the children."

"It is always an honor to be here with you," I replied.

We were speaking to each other in words of hype, in promotional phrases. We had each idealized the other. I wanted to continue to envision Mrs. H. as the Mother of All Mothers to Orphans I'd seen on my first visit. She wanted me to always see her through rose-colored glasses. She wouldn't mind my sanctifying her in prose as a sort of Ethiopian Mother Teresa.

Loyal to her true goodness, clinging to my first deep impressions of Mrs. H., I began writing the book. But, seated at my desk in Atlanta, I fell under the siege of e-mails, letters, and phone calls of complaint from visitors to Addis Ababa. People who'd read my story about Mrs. H. had called on her, bearing gifts for the children. "The children are ill-kempt!" the visitors e-mailed me in dismay. "The children are ragged-looking and dirty." "The children are hungry." "The children are bored." Ethiopian citizens contacted me too: "Mrs. H. is living like a queen in the third house. She is not living with the children." Visiting nurses and doctors (whom I'd invited to Mrs. H.'s foster homes) e-mailed and phoned: "Mrs. H. is not providing adequate nutrition to the HIV-positive children." "Mrs. H. is not careful about the timing and doses of the anti-AIDS medications."

In alarm, I flew back repeatedly, to see for myself. Of course, Mrs. H. always knew I was coming. She'd welcome me warmly and assure me that all was well. "You are the one," she'd remind me as we embraced.

I liked being the "one" when things were going well; in times of trouble, I wasn't sure I wanted to take credit. But the children looked pretty good. They needed new school uniforms; and they certainly were bored in the afternoons; but at least they went to school (only 56 percent of Ethiopian seven-year-olds attend); at least they had a roof over their heads, regular meals, and adults looking out for them. Those who were HIV-positive were among the first children on the continent to receive anti-AIDS medicine. I tried to rationalize the American complaints with the idea that this was a third-world country, where upper-middle-class Western standards of hygiene, mealtime, and playtime weren't easily met. And it didn't bother me that Mrs. H. occasionally sought sanctuary in the elegant and quiet third house.

Still, as we assumed our ever-expanding roles, truer feelings were moving beneath the surface. Mrs. H. was tired of my observing her; she wanted freedom to run things in her own way, without criticism from visitors and health professionals. I was growing confused about what sort of person she really was. What were her motivations?

"You are the one," I heard her say one day to a business-suited manager of Addis Ababa's Sheraton. He hoped to extend the hotel's charitable giving to Mrs. H. "You are the one who is helping us."

"You are the one," I overheard her tell another man, a farmer from a rural county who planned to donate a cow so that the orphans would have fresh milk. "You are the one who is saving the children."

"I thought I was the `one,'" I muttered to myself. Mrs. H. was spending her energy on flattery and local politics. How many "ones" were there?

"I just don't even know who she is anymore!" I confessed to a friend back home in Atlanta. "I've lost sight of the amazing goodness I once saw in her."

"Listen," said my friend. "I've heard that even Mother Teresa was no Mother Teresa."

I understood this, and yet I didn't understand it completely. I understood how it pertained to Mrs. H. I didn't get that it also pertained to me.

I finished writing the book through the more accurate perspective that a person doesn't have to be a saint to do great things. It was an even better story in that light: Mrs. H., an everyday woman with the usual faults, had worked miracles.

There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue her Country's Children was published and translated into 15 languages. BBC Radio sent a reporter to visit Mrs. H.; fans paid her way for a book tour in Italy; a Taiwanese foundation flew her to Taiwan and presented her with an award. A major Hollywood studio purchased the rights to my book and her story. "You are the one," she told me on the phone from Taiwan, and I laughed and wanted to believe it, but just hearing those words threw me off balance again.

It was hard for me to stay steady with Mrs. H. I began by overestimating and exalting her, and then the teeter-totter tilted, and I underestimated and scorned her. My estimation of my own importance went up and down with hers. Whenever I spoke to her, I felt either dewy-eyed or cynical. Neither was my usual approach in life.

What I needed to accept was that Mrs. H. and I were each a brew of excellent intentions and egotistical ambitions. We didn't have these traits in greater or lesser quantities than the norm. Maybe because I'd first beheld her at sail in a sea of children I felt an urge to place her on a pedestal. My impossibly high esteem for her was certain to leave me disappointed, and so I veered in the opposite direction, feeling betrayed because she wasn't perfect.

In any case, the book was finished and it was time for us to go our separate ways.

But we couldn't.

Normally a journalist walks away from a subject's life when the reporting is at an end. But how do you walk away from houses full of orphaned children? I'd taken hundreds of pictures of the children; I'd bottle-fed the babies and taken the big kids on field trips. I'd written grant requests for them. I'd left my 18-year-old son, Lee, with Mrs. H. as a volunteer. Nearly everyone who wanted to reach Mrs. H. found her through me. Most significantly, my family was in the process of adopting two brothers from Mrs. H.'s foster home. She had seemed to welcome this when I first asked her about the boys; now I wasn't sure she still felt that way.

All these events—her rising celebrity, the book's popularity, the movie deal, the travel, the adoptions—might have allowed us to work as partners now, as equals. We might have fallen into step; we might have understood each other as neither perfect nor terribly flawed. But we couldn't seem to break out of our roles, which ballooned disproportionately whenever we met. She cranked up the Global Humanitarian act, while I posed as the Awestruck Journalist. Our truer selves were Aggravated and Exhausted Humanitarian Who Wishes the Bossy American Would Get the Hell Out of Her Life, and Concerned Journalist Who Can't Tell if Her Book's Protagonist Still Has the Orphaned Children Upper-most in Her Mind.

What connected us felt like shackles, because they yoked us to false roles.

Four years after I first met Mrs. H. and a year after I first asked her about adopting the brothers, our adoption of the two boys foundered. Six months passed. Nine months. I came to the awful conclusion that Mrs. H. was not in a hurry to see the simple case—both parents deceased, destitute uncle eager to sign the adoption papers—reach court. But why? I felt there was a touch of the empress in it: No one will tell me what to do or when to do it. And also something of the Little Red Hen: I rescued the children, I raised the children, I fed the children, I sent the children to school, I taught the children their prayers, now no one else may come along and take the children.

There was no future for the two brothers with Mrs. H.; within a few years, she'd have nothing to offer them: They'd be too old for her orphanage and would have to make their way in Addis Ababa. She needed the space; she had no reason to cling to them.

"Please," I asked by long-distance phone. "Please help us with the adoption." I pathetically tried to resume our roles of Ridiculously Important Humanitarian and Minor and Grateful Journalist: "You are the one. You are the only one who can help us."

In fact, she wasn't the only one. I made an end run and turned to Ethiopian friends to locate the boys' uncle, drive him to court, and finalize the paperwork. Mrs. H. phoned one day to tell me the great news: The adoption was finished! The boys were ours!

"Thank you!" I cried, as if I didn't already know; as if I hadn't worked toward this outcome behind her back.

With time and distance, with the adoptions complete, the chafing heat between us began to cool. I wasn't interviewing or researching Mrs. H. anymore; I wasn't on top of her, watching and judging and taking notes. We each moved on with our lives, making phone contact every few months.

I believe—with time—we'd have reached a plateau of greater understanding; we'd have realized that it is an achievement when any one of us gives our generous intentions, what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature," the upper hand over a desire for fame.

Did she and I check at times to see if we were getting full credit for the great stuff we were doing? Yes, we did, both of us.

Did she and I, most of the time, give free rein to our purer motives and reach out to the orphaned children out of deep wells of goodness and love?

Yes, I believe we did.

Does the first impeach the value of the second?

No, it does not. We are human.

Mrs. H. and I last talked by phone in March 2009. For the rest of my life I will be grateful that our contact at that moment was light and sweet. My son Lee was traveling from his Israeli university to visit Mrs. H., bringing along his closest friend, a young woman. "Is this his girlfriend?" Mrs. H. asked, delighted with the upcoming visit. She loved Lee.

"I don't know!" I cried. "We've been trying to find out!"

"I will find out," she bragged.

"You are the one!" I exclaimed. "You are the one who can find out!"

We laughed happily, with true warmth and camaraderie. It felt like our earliest days together; or perhaps like something even better than our earliest days. We chuckled like two friends, two middle-aged women pondering the mysteries of youthful love.

On March 17, 2009, Mrs. H. died suddenly in her bed, most likely of congestive heart failure, two days prior to my son's visit. Lee and his friend stepped into a courtyard full of weeping, bereft children and disbelieving caregivers. Mrs. H. left behind a hole that can never be filled. She saved the lives of hundreds of children. She was not a saint. She was not a humanitarian. She was not perfect. She enjoyed winning prizes and having her picture taken and being written about. But she was the one who saved them.

Melissa Fay Greene's new memoir, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, about raising nine children, five of them adopted from Ethiopia and Bulgaria, was published in May.